President Obama spoke at the Casa Azafran community center in Nashville on Tuesday.Credit Jabin Botsford/The New York Times

Speaking at an immigration event in Nashville, President Obama urged Congress to pass comprehensive immigration legislation. Referring to the possibility of a future president undoing his executive action, he warned, “Without an actual law, an actual statute passed by Congress, it’s true that a future administration could do something that would be very damaging.”

Democrats and Republicans in the Senate are considering including a provision in the spending bill that would allow the two parties to raise millions of additional dollars from wealthy donors, according to congressional aides with knowledge of the discussions.

The new provision would allow each party to raise up to $20 million in a separate fund devoted to paying for its national presidential conventions every four years. To get the money, the parties could solicit $90,000 from any individual each year — roughly three times the amount an individual donor can regularly give to party committees. Political action committees could contribute $45,000, triple the amount PACs can contribute for other party business.

The discussion comes after Congress voted this year to abolish public financing for the conventions and rededicate that money to medical research, forcing the Republican and Democratic national committees to find other sources of money for the 2016 conventions.

Such a provision, if passed, would allow party leaders to ask their biggest donors for far more cash than has been allowed in the past. And it would go considerably further than a new rule established by the Federal Election Commission in October at the request of Republican and Democratic leaders that created a similar but much narrower exception to the normal caps on contributions by big donors.

It was not clear whether Democrats, Republicans or both are pushing for the new provision. A spokesman for Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, did not respond to a request for comment.

On Tuesday, a coalition of advocacy groups opposed to raising contribution limits blasted the proposal.

“This is a deal to embrace corruption in our political system that could only take place if Democratic and Republic leaders in Congress agreed to the deal,” said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21. “In practical terms this would represent a return to the corrupt soft-money system of huge contributions to the national parties that Congress banned in 2002.”

Secretary of State John Kerry testified Tuesday before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

While we certainly believe this is the soundest policy, and while the president has been clear he’s open to clarifications on the use of U.S. combat troops to be outlined in an A.U.M.F., that does not mean we should pre-emptively bind the hands of the commander-in-chief — or our commanders in the field — in responding to scenarios and contingencies that are impossible to foresee.

Secretary of State John Kerry speaking to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the question of whether American ground troops should join in the fight against the Islamic State. (Mr. Kerry used the acronym for an Authorization to Use Military Force.)

Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, left after Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, gave a speech on the Senate floor on Tuesday.Credit Yuri Gripas/Reuters

Several Republican members of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday pushed back against the release of the declassified executive summary of the panel’s report on the torture of prisoners by the Central Intelligence Agency. They condemned the report on techniques used during the George W. Bush administration as “partisan.”

Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, the panel’s top Republican, released a statement with the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, that said the C.I.A.’s techniques had led to intelligence that helped disrupt Al Qaeda and kill Osama bin Laden.

“As we have both stated before, we are opposed to this study and believe it will present serious consequences for U.S. national security,” they said in the statement. “Regardless of what one’s opinions may be on these issues, the study by Senate Democrats is an ideologically motivated and distorted recounting of historical events.”

Those who served us in aftermath of 9/11 deserve our thanks not one sided partisan Senate report that now places American lives in danger.

Three of the panel’s seven Republicans voted in April to declassify the report. Senator Susan Collins — the Maine Republican who joined the committee after the report was finished — said in a statement that while she took issue with some of the report’s “unfortunate” methodology and conclusions, Americans should have the opportunity to make up their own minds about the report.

“Despite these significant flaws, the report’s findings lead me to conclude that some detainees were subjected to techniques that constituted torture,” she said. “This inhumane and brutal treatment never should have occurred.”

Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, speaking to reporters about the Senate report as he headed to the Capitol.Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

On the subject of torture, few can say “I know from personal experience” like Senator John McCain can.

And after the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday released a damning report on the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogation methods, Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona, a former prisoner of war who was tortured by the North Vietnamese, delivered a powerful condemnation of the agency’s actions.

While many other Republicans criticized the committee and its chairwoman, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, a Democrat, Mr. McCain offered nothing but praise.

“The truth is sometimes a hard pill to swallow,” he said, standing at his desk on the Senate floor as Ms. Feinstein and other colleagues looked on. “It sometimes causes us difficulties at home and abroad. It is sometimes used by our enemies in attempts to hurt us. But the American people are entitled to it, nonetheless.”

He called waterboarding “an exquisite form of torture” and “shameful.” The C.I.A.’s techniques, he said, “stained our national honor, did much harm and little practical good.”

Mr. McCain dismissed the charge that exposing details of the program would endanger American lives, saying much of what is included in the report has been known for a decade and would be used by those looking for an excuse for violence.

“I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners will produce more bad than good intelligence,” he said. “I know that victims of torture will offer intentionally misleading information if they think their captors will believe it. I know they will say whatever they think their torturers want them to say if they believe it will stop their suffering.”

He closed by saying he believed the country gave up far more in honor than what it obtained in intelligence. “We need only remember in the worst of times, through the chaos and terror of war, when facing cruelty, suffering and loss, that we are always Americans, and different, stronger and better than those who would destroy us.”

As he walked off the floor, Ms. Feinstein called out to him, walked over to his desk and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California and chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, en route to the Senate floor on Tuesday to talk about the release of the committee's report on the torture of prisoners held by the Central Intelligence Agency.Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

Gov. Chris Christie will attend a conference next month hosted by Representative Steve King of Iowa, the Republican whose outspoken and conservative views on immigration have made him a divisive figure. It will be the second time in just a few months that Mr. Christie will travel to Iowa to attend an event with Mr. King.

Mr. Christie’s growing ties to Mr. King may test a pillar of his political reputation, as both governor of New Jersey and as a possible presidential candidate: his electoral appeal to Latino voters.

Mr. Christie earned 51 percent of the Hispanic vote when he was re-elected in 2012, making him the rare Republican governor to achieve that distinction. And he has signed legislation allowing New Jersey students without legal immigration status to pay in-state college tuition.

Mr. Christie attended an Iowa fund-raising event hosted by Mr. King in late October. He is now scheduled to speak at a January forum that Mr. King is holding in Des Moines, aides confirmed on Tuesday.

Mr. King is adamantly opposed to immigration reform and, in discussing the topic, has at times employed language that even Republican colleagues find offensive.

In July, Mr. King claimed that for every child of illegal immigrants “who’s a valedictorian, there’s another 100 out there who weigh 130 pounds and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.”

That earned him a rebuke from Speaker John A. Boehner, who called his comments “deeply offensive and wrong.”

Mr. Christie criticized Mr. King’s comment at the time, calling it “an awful comment and one that he shouldn’t have made, and you know, sometimes I’m shocked by the level of intolerant comments that otherwise intelligent people will make.”

Jonathan Gruber, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an adviser on the drafting of the Affordable Care Act, testifies during a House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing on Tuesday.Credit Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Jonathan Gruber, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist who advised the Obama administration on the Affordable Care Act, apologized on Tuesday for inflammatory comments that have brought negative attention to the law in recent months.

Mr. Gruber stirred controversy when he said in a speech that a lack of transparency and “the stupidity of the American voter” made it possible for the health law to pass. The videos went viral after they surfaced.

While Mr. Gruber was apologetic, he also attempted to distance himself from the law, arguing that he is not a political adviser or a politician.

“I did not draft Governor Romney’s health care plan, and I was not the ‘architect’ of President Obama’s health care plan,” Mr. Gruber said in his remarks to the committee.

Mr. Gruber said that he ran models to help governments project likely outcomes of policy choices and that his speeches were meant for technical audiences at academic conferences.

Room 211 in the Senate Hart Office Building on Capitol Hill where, below, the Senate Intelligence Committee has its headquarters. Above, the office of Senator Elizabeth Warren.Credit Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

Good Tuesday morning from Washington, where the Senate’s “Dr. No” is pinpointing Congress’s ills, Prince William made a brief pit stop (by commercial airplane), and the C.I.A.’s torture secrets are about to be spilled.

A long-delayed Senate report documenting the C.I.A.’s torture of terrorism detainees is set to become public on Tuesday, ending a tense clash that challenged the ability of Congress to keep watch over the nation’s intelligence community.

White House officials said they anticipated that Democratic members of the Intelligence Committee led by Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the chairwoman of the panel, would release a summary of the report that was five years in the making and faced repeated attempts to keep it secret. It incited a bitter fight between lawmakers and the agency and a disclosure that C.I.A workers had secretly penetrated Senate computers.

The report is one of the most significant congressional reviews of C.I.A. operations since the Church Committee in the mid-1970s. That panel’s findings led to the creation of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, which were supposed to monitor the intelligence apparatus and prevent it from going astray.

“We had hoped this would result in a serious partnership between the legislative branch and the executive branch to make sure they would work together,” said Loch K. Johnson, a political scientist at the University of Georgia who was an assistant to Senator Frank Church of Idaho, chairman of Church Committee. “Instead, this current administration and the one before have been very hostile to the oversight process.”

He welcomed the torture report’s becoming public, saying: “The most important lesson is, you look at your mistakes, and you try not to make them again.”

President Obama may have a future in the fake news business after his term is up.

As a guest on “The Colbert Report” on Monday night, he ably filled in for Stephen Colbert in a segment called “The Decree,” in which he poked fun at his presidency and mused about dismantling his health care law.

Mr. Obama also weathered a barrage of wry jokes from Mr. Colbert, who said that as the president enters his final stretch in office, he is like both the main characters in the Lethal Weapon movies.

“He’s a crazy renegade with nothing to lose, and he’s a black guy who’s this close to retirement,” Mr. Colbert said.

Interspersed with the levity, Mr. Obama defended his use of executive authority on immigration, reiterated his doubts about the Keystone XL pipeline project, and highlighted his economic record.

Pressed by Mr. Colbert as to whether he loves the power of the office, Mr. Obama emphasized that he loves the job, but admitted that life remained humbling. His daughters, he said, tease him mercilessly for his big ears and stodgy suits, and there are still dirty socks to pick up.

Senator Tom Coburn, the Oklahoma Republican who has used Senate rules like a bludgeon against legislation he doesn’t like, may be retiring from Congress to battle prostate cancer, but he is not going quietly.

On Tuesday, the family practitioner, called Dr. No for his willingness to block bills, will release a 321-page “Tax Decoder” report that cites chapter and verse of how unwieldy the tax code has become and how riddled it is with special tax breaks for the well-to-do and well-connected. The report, published at midnight ahead of a Tuesday news conference, skewers some of his Republican colleagues – and the antitax activist Grover Norquist – for insisting that closing any loophole amounts to an unacceptable tax increase.

The report is only the beginning. On Thursday, Mr. Coburn will deliver his farewell address on the Senate floor, and he promises to be unsparing in his criticism of the ways of Washington – and both political parties. He also plans to slow the passage of the annual defense policy bill over his objections to a land swap that would put some land under federal protections while freeing other parcels for resource development.

With a schedule of paid speeches already set for early next year, it seems likely that Hillary Rodham Clinton will not officially begin any presidential campaign until spring. But that does not mean the Democratic presidential primary will be entirely quiet.

Former Senator James Webb of Virginia, who has already formed an exploratory committee; Gov. Martin O’Malley of Maryland; and Senator Bernard Sanders, a Vermont independent who may run as a Democrat, are all nearly certain to keep up their water-testing in the next few months.

And the liberal advocacy MoveOn.org appears ready to do its part to nudge Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts to reconsider her decision not to run for president in 2016.

Jonathan Gruber, the health care consultant who advised the Obama administration on the Affordable Care Act and is facing criticism for comments about the passage of the law, testifies before a House committee at 9:30 a.m.

While the duke appeared to be seated in first class, his seatmates were still wowed that he deigned to mix with mere mortals. Even Anderson Cooper of CNN found sharing a flight with the prince to be worthy of a post on Twitter.

The hourly shuttles can be plagued with delays, but flight logs show that the duke’s planes were on time and even a bit early.

Retiring Senator Jay Rockefeller, Democrat of West Virginia, had a last-minute change of heart and supported a bill to overhaul the Freedom of Information Act, Politico reports, allowing the legislation to move forward.

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